If Vanquish had been made around 150 years ago, Shinji Mikami would have had to commit seppuku, the Japanese ritual of suicide by disembowelment.
Vanquish All right, Mr. big shot
Like many artists and scholars during Japan's Bakamatsu period, the legendary producer of Resident Evil, God Hand and Bayonetta would have sliced …

Framerates

It's a common misconception that we cannot see more than 24fps, generally speaking 24fps is where the mind begins to fill in the gaps and sees fluid motion rather then jerky frame to frame changes, but the eye can discern much more than that, some gamers even feel that 120fps is visible to them.

On the flip side it's also all down to the speed of movement being displayed, if say an arm is moving very slowly, you won't be able to see a difference between 30 or 60fps because the movement is so slow you can't see any huge jumps between frames. If it's slow enough 10fps may look the same as well!

It's also worth noting that games are different to film. With film the exposure time of the camera will lead to slight blurring between frames when there's fast motion. With games there isn't any blur like this (artificial motion blur in games doesn't make games look any smoother). With games it's just fixed frames of animation which is why more frames per second leads to a smoother image. Of course that's not to say film can't benefit from more fps as well, but for games it always makes things look smoother.

Plus there's the whole area of input lag where games running at 60fps feel much more responsive because they're updating the screen in half the time it takes a 30fps game to display a change. All in all, the general rule of thumb is more fps = better. :)

60 vs 30

"can you tell the difference between 60 and 30 fps with just your eyes?"

Yes, it's blindingly obvious. 30fps is stuttery and laggy by comparison. I can tell the difference between 120fps and 60fps too, although it's a little harder, and of course requires a display that actually does 120fps. (Which I have, and 120fps is sweet if you can get a game that will do so consistently, usually older titles. Talking about computers here obviously, not consoles.)

excellent answer

thanks.

this does make sense, i'm a gamer myself but FPS for me is more of a benchmark of how well your system is running the game. I didn't think that it mattered much in terms of how good it looked (obviously so long as it stays over 30) but I wondered...

So I just broke out Crysis (had to be done) while monitoring FPS (PC, natch).

Turns out I *can* actually see the difference, even past 60 it's noticeable.

Um

"A formidable, ground breaking title that will likely be misunderstood by all but the most open-minded of gamers." Basically saying "this game is amazing and anyone who disagrees is close-minded" is not a promising start to a review.

Goody!

How old is Mr Bailey?

I'm beginning to get how games are reviewed on The Register; Graphics are what counts and shooters score highly. Things are only review on the PS3 or PC. RPGs and involving games score low. If a game is about 5 hours long, thats fine, because thats about how long the attention span of the reviewer is. Is Andrew Bailey 13 by any chance?

sorry

I just couldn't get past the idea that anyone might have to deliberately overheat their ARS. 10 out of 10 for keeping a straight face all the way through your review with that bombshell sitting there waiting to go off..